Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3378
“Keep yourselves in the love of God.” Jude 1:21
THIS exhortation is not addressed to all who are here present. It is only addressed to those who “are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called.” It is, in fact, addressed only to the true Christian who has passed from death unto life—who is a new creature in Christ Jesus—and in whom dwells the Holy Spirit. To such persons the Apostle Jude says in the text, “Keep yourselves in the love of God.” To other persons we have this to say—You cannot keep yourselves in the love of God, for you never knew what it was to be in it. You have lived—with shame and sorrow be it spoken—you have lived all this while in a world that is full of God and yet you have never perceived Him! You have been a pensioner upon His bounty, clothed by His charity, protected by His Providence and yet you have been altogether forgetful of the God whom you ought to have loved with all your heart, soul and strength! Ah, little do you know what you have lost by living without the love of God! The love of God is that which fills our mortal existence with the brightness of Heaven and makes us feast on immortal joys, even in this vale of tears! If some men were born and bred in mines, where they saw not the light of day, I can suppose that they would think themselves possibly better off than those who had lived above and who had walked abroad in the light. I can suppose them to be even conceited because they found themselves better able to find their way about in the gloomy caverns below than those would be whose eyes had been used to the light—more at home there in the gloomy bowels of the earth than the sons of light who had lived above. I can imagine their getting much conceit to themselves because of their enjoying the darkness which is beneath. But still, what a miserable life would it always be to live in that gloom—and what a change to be taken suddenly and for the first time from the dark pit out into the light—to look upon the green fields, the god of day, the flashing waves of the sea and the glories of the starry night! So I can conceive many of my hearers having lived so long in the dark world where there is no light, that they have acquired the art of living in this gloom until they are “wiser in their generation than the children of light.” They can do a thousand things better than God’s people can do and they, therefore, perhaps despise the Christian. But oh, my Friends, if you could but be brought out into the world of love, the world of light, where God, the blessed Sun of Love who floods the earth with peace and blessedness could shine upon those darkened eyeballs of yours— if you could but “know the love of Christ which passes knowledge”—you would think that you had never lived before and would pity yourselves to think you could have spent so many years without knowing what true life means! May that come to pass with some tonight! Pray, Christian, pray for those who know not God, that He may be found of them. Ask for them that mighty Grace may come and meet with them and that they may also begin to understand what “the love of God” means!
But the text is spoken to Christians and we must keep it to them and come at once to apply it to the Believer.
The word, “keep,” which is used here, has in it, in the Greek, the idea of keeping under a guard, or of keeping a prisoner in custody. There is the thought of watchfully regarding one who is likely to escape—and so we are told to keep ourselves in the love of God as the warden keeps his prisoner in his cell. I do not like to use such a metaphor in connection with so sweet a text, and yet I must, and so we will have three thoughts. First, we will speak a little about this prison— oh, that we may be always shut up in it!—“the love of God.” Secondly, about the earnest warden who is told to keep the prisoner And then, thirdly, about the free prisoners, “keep yourselves in the love of God. “Keep yourselves i n heavenly custody, being never so free and never so happy, as when shut up in this Divine enclosure!
I really do not like to use the text with such a meaning, but I cannot very well bring out the meaning of it in any better way. Let us speak, then, first of—
I. The Heavenly Prison of “the Love of God.”
There is no restraint about this prison. He who gets into it finds, for the first time, true liberty! Then his mind is free from all its bondage. Then his faculties find themselves in a sea where they may swim. Then are his purest longings gratified. Then are his passions allowed to take wing and mount as they will. Then the soul has space to float onwards and when it comes fully to the love of God, the new-born soul is in its element!